Unité 1

cajun 101 - learn louisiana french at home

Leçon 2 - Mon nom, c'est...

Mon nom, c'est Albert. Quoi c'est ton nom?

My name, it is Albert. What is your name?

We'll dive in with an example of how Louisiana French (LF) is different than International French (IF). One of the first things you'll learn to say when learning IF is Je m'appelle... Comment t'appelles tu? Or, in English, I call myself... How do you call yourself. Cajuns will also understand and use these constructions, but it's more common we'll use the construction above.

The words mon and ton are possessive pronouns, my and your respectively. Notice here that mon and ton are used in their masculine form. Since these pronouns modify nouns, they will change to match the gender of the noun. Since nom is masculine, the corresponding pronoun must be masculine.

• le nom, the name
• mon nom, my name
• ton nom, your name
• son nom, his or her name

C'est is a very useful expression in French, it means "it is" or "this is." It's a contraction of ce and est. Quoi means what and nom is (obviously) name. As you can see, the Cajun French way of asking and saying your name is very much like English.

To study these words, try the Quizlet set for this lesson.